


here am I made manifest (by not being you)

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [190]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Finrod and Fingolfin's relationship is hella important, Finrod is the healthiest?? of all four cousins, Finrod staying when Fingon is going, Gen, On the shores of Lake Mithrim, POV First Person, Processing Stuff, both good boys!, title from a poem by Amy King
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:28:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23022502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: My place is here.
Relationships: Arien & Finrod Felagund | Findaráto, Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë & Finrod Felagund | Findaráto, Fingon | Findekáno & Finrod Felagund | Findaráto, Fingon | Findekáno & Maedhros | Maitimo, Finrod Felagund | Findaráto & Galadriel | Artanis, Finrod Felagund | Findaráto & Maedhros | Maitimo, Maedhros | Maitimo & Arien
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [190]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	here am I made manifest (by not being you)

When I ended my watch, Fingon lay sleeping, or so I thought. Until now, I would have sworn by every holy thing I know that it was Maedhros who taught lies. I was also quite certain that Fingon was a poor pupil, unable to deceive.

But now, in the brightness of a broken morning, I must own that it was _I_ who taught Fingon the finer points of tracking and stalking; how to wait in the tall grass like a tense-bodied lion, how to shape one’s breathing so that animals and unfriendly humans will think one falsely unaware.

He learned that last lesson well.

There was a great hubbub in the middle of the night, of course. The kind that robbed rest from all of us, and Fingon most of all. _That_ should have been a tell for me, also.

How could Fingon sleep like the dead, when Maedhros was... _not_ dead?

 _But he is_ , grey-faced Gwindor says, in my mind. I do not think _he_ is lying either, or I did not; we have since discovered that he is gone as well.

No one could tell us that they had seen them; Estrela and the children were unable to help. But after the half-hour of frantic, hope-thin searching, I stood before my uncle and could scarcely meet his eyes.

The silence between us was so aching, so long, that it seemed like a heavy hand upon my shoulder.

“Finrod,” he said at last, his voice thick with feeling. “I do not blame you.”

And thus was I overcome by even greater guilt.

“He was always going to—follow such a chance,” Fingolfin continued. “Gwindor might show him the way, but he is not a foolish man. Perhaps he may...dissuade Fingon, when the road grows long.”

We both knew full well that no power on this earth could dissuade Fingon, if he thought there was hope. Or life.

Maedhros’ life.

“Shall I follow them?” I asked, trying and failing to keep my own voice steady. “Say the word, sir. Beren and I will track them, and bring him back.”

“ _No_ ,” my uncle answered, so emphatically that I started. “No, Finrod. I cannot lose you too. And it would be loss. It _is_ —loss.”

He crumpled, suddenly. Our leader, who had borne a half-brother’s betrayal and half his family gone. He spoke his son’s name behind the shaking shield of his hands, as one might say farewell.

(Fingon crawled over the vicious ice-floor of our paltry shelter, when my aunt died, and took his father in his arms.)

In my mind, I hear my own father say:

_Go to him._

I do. I can feel how lean and spare his body still is, against mine, though his broad shoulders and heavy coat hide much.

I am reminded of Maedhros.

I do not want to be reminded of Maedhros.

“You do me good, Finrod,” he says at last, clapping my shoulder and blinking the dampness from his eyes. “I am grateful for you, now and always.”

I nod. I cannot speak.

Why—

Did Fingon think he could not trust me? That I would have refused to accompany him, if he had asked for my aid?

(I do not know, rightly, what I would have done. I traveled west alone, to be free. I stay by Fingolfin’s side, now, because it is right to do so.

We have all lost so much that I have not had the time to wonder what _I_ may have lost of myself.)

Turgon and Aredhel and my sister are huddled together, with Beren and Wachiwi looking gloomy beside them. Their breath fogs the air, just as mine does. The lake-mist wafts like smoke, dissipating in the light of day.

I must see the glint of sunshine on Turgon’s plain wedding band, and think of Elenwe and tiny Idril, from whom we parted first. I must look at Aredhel, her face pinched with worry, and acknowledge to myself how little I know of her particular wounds, those that are beyond the hurts done to her family.

(Last night, Celegorm was with her.)

Galadriel spies me, and leaps up from her dusty seat on the ground. “Finrod,” she says, sharp as she has been since childhood, “What are you going to do?”

I can feel their eyes on me. I feel lonely and young, without Fingon here to be younger than me, while still being grown.

Turgon is—was— _married_. _I_ am not being fair.

“Listen to me,” I say, as firmly as I can manage. “If we can keep word of Fingon’s departure from being the talk of the camp, we will be better for it.”

“So it is agreed-upon; he is gone after…a dead man,” Galadriel snaps. “Lord, what a fool.”

“Artanis,” I say, sharp myself. “Please.”

She subsides. Aredhel is staring at the ground.

“You will not follow?” Turgon asks, with a wry twist to both the words and the corner of his mouth.

Turgon is ever a stark reminder of how we have divided our loyalties. It can offer him no comfort, to serve as such a constant.

I try to sort the grief out of the anger in my heart. I feel empty, and savagely conscious of that emptiness.

“My place,” I tell my strong-jawed cousin, “Is here.”

There is nothing to do. Beren tells me that he and Ames will go hunting, and that they will be on their guard, but I have not the spirit to join them. My uncle and I agree that we had better use our time to regroup and rest, rather than to spar with the Feanorians before another day has passed.

They are like goaded beasts, I think. The news of Maedhros, living, must make them wild.

Haleth alone has a present choice to make. I see her circling the edge of the camp—she knows that Fingon has gone, and she knows where, but she had little to say on the matter, as yet.

She has no reason to remain with us, but for her staunch generosity. Her own agreements and duties beckon her south. If she leaves, with her company, the rescued slaves shall still make our numbers appear formidable to Fort Mithrim.

In truth, our companions have shifted faces so often that another change should not alarm me in the least. The only travelers with us who came from the east, and who are not likewise of our blood, are two or three members of my uncle’s former household.

They might well be called family, now.

Haleth has her own patchwork history of kinship. What she chooses is her right.

What we hope for is not always ours.

I close my eyes to see Fingon, slipping away between the fingers of the dawn.

I do not seek out Haleth.

“Is there news?” Estrela asks, the seam of her mouth opening in the wrong shape (but _hers_ , I must remember, it is still hers).

“No,” I say. “I am sorry.” I am not a doctor, though I have tended wounds and held the dead and dying. I may be skillful in conversation with strangers, and I may map hills and forests well, but I find myself blunt-edged when the need hanging in thin air is mine. I should have known, that Estrela would be distressed by a disturbance.

The children are not with her. She is sitting up amid a heap of blankets, with her hands in her lap. I observe her hands, and see that they are wounded (as Fingon found them), but not misshapen. Whoever scarred her features did not—

“Finrod?”

“Yes?” I start.

She doesn’t say anything else. She waits. I try to—I try to imagine Maedhros, knowing her.

“If you are not too weary,” I propose at last, “I wonder…I wonder if you would speak with me.”

Her one eye blinks. Her lips work, and then she pats the blankets beside her. “Very good, Finrod. Sit down.”

I think she is learning how my name sounds in her mouth.

I am Finrod, friend to strangers. Estrela is not really a stranger. I seat myself with my legs crossed, and my elbows on my knees.

Here is another aching silence.

“It…I…” I link my fingers. I look down at them. At the hands that could not hold life inside some, or others inside safety. I am ashamed of what I have to ask. “Can you help me mourn him?”

She drags in a breath. “Russandol?”

“Yes.”

“He was your cousin.”

“He was.”

We are both speaking, with painful ease, in the past tense.

“And he hurt you?”

There is a dam of a wall in the heart of Finarfin’s son— _see no ill-humor, and speak not of that which causes harm_ —and long had I thought it broken. I see, now, that it has held strong despite me.

“Our family was spread across New York,” I explain. “The city, and otherwise. There were three brothers…” And I am telling our story all wrong, but she is listening, attentively. Her ears are small, delicate, beneath the tangled shock of her hair. “Three brothers. The youngest was my father. The eldest was—was born of another mother. His name was Feanor.”

And there, a gasp.

“You—do you know that name?”

“He is Russandol’s father?” she mumbles, her hands clenched and her eye closed.

The pit of my stomach gapes with unease. I nod.

“Forgive me,” she says, opening her eye. “Go on.” She has regained control of…of _something_. I know not what.

“Feanor was very proud. Proud—and suspicious. He had seven sons, and they lived far away from us, for most of my life. It doesn’t…I don’t think it matters why. Feanor mistrusted Melkor Bauglir, whose own brother was very powerful in New York. Melkor Bauglir, I believe, murdered my grandfather.”

“It grieves me to hear it,” Estrela answers. “But I am not surprised.”

“My uncles—Fingolfin, you know, is the other—agreed to travel together, west. My father did not choose to join them. I and my sister did. However, Feanor and his family left first. They—he—” I thought I was so angry, and so free, but I will not blame Maedhros wholly, even now—“He stole the money and supplies that were to be shared. He killed men who stood in his way. As such, we traveled in his ruinous wake. Found ourselves betrayed, and never rejoined them. But they…they came here. And we came to have a reckoning, and found Feanor dead.”

“And Russandol,” she breathes. “Him, too.”

“His name is Maedhros, to us. But yes.” My eyes blur. I do not want to weep.

“You are angry at him?”

“I am.”

“You love him.”

“I do.”

Estrela stirs restlessly. “Your cousin,” she says, slowly and carefully, so that I may understand the words well, “Has atoned for any and all of his sins.”

I meet her gaze. I swallow hard. _Finarfin’s son._

_Earwen’s son._

_Finrod._

I do not know what Maedhros taught Fingon, but I think we were all attempting to become our own men.

“What did they do to him?” I ask. In a way, this is running, just as Fingon did. _Towards_.

She sighs. There are tears in that sigh. “Since he is gone now,” she says, and I cannot be certain how resigned she is, to the truth of that tragedy, “Do you really wish to know?”

I say, because I must: “I do.”

“Bauglir had him first,” Estrela says. “I do not know how long. He was hurt dreadfully, there. They tormented him in the way they do all living things. For amusement, and for fear.”

I taste blood in my mouth, where I have bitten the soft part of my cheek. The scars on her face are all that I—all that I can see.

She knows this, perhaps, yet she keeps on. “When they had no more use for him, they made him a slave. But he was not like us. He fought.”

“That is Maedhros,” I whisper. “He would have fought.”

“Not with his hands, always,” Estrela counters, as if she guesses some mistake in my understanding. “With his heart, and his mind. I first saw him fight when he was being beaten. He had no use of his hands, then.”

“Beaten?” And there, I cannot imagine it.

“Whipped.” She is pained to speak of it, I can tell. I myself am crawled over by prickles of sick anguish. They cover every inch of my skin. “He nearly died of it. But he would not die, our Russandol. Your… _Maedhros_.”

I cover my mouth with one hand.

Estrela says—

“He was very beautiful, your cousin.”

I weep for a long time. She does too.

And when we are finished, and drying our tears on our sleeves, Estrela smiles.

I can tell that it is a smile, now. That they could not take that from her is a wonder all its own.

Estrela says, “Can you help me remember him?”

And in kind, I tell her of the Maedhros I knew.


End file.
